In anticipation of Saturday’s party with Egyptrixx and Night Slugs’ boss Bok Bok, we asked Boston based DJ Yogic to dig deeper into David Psutka’s (Egyptrixx) mind, music, and ideas. Yogic will be opening for GROOVY GROOVY’s party this Friday at Trans-Pecos debuting for the first time ever LIMIT, the latest Egyptrixx and L-Vis 1990 project. Whether you are in NY or Boston this weekend, you will absolutely get your Night Slugs fill!
Interview by Yogic
YOGIC: As your recent releases have illustrated your disinterest in following a ‘genre’ specific format, how would you describe your current inspiration and musical direction?
EGYPTRIXX: I think/hope that all of the projects I contribute to have pretty specific parameters + objectives, and hopefully that is what makes them vital or interesting (It’s hard for me to work on anything without some rules or focus). The egyptrixx project has always been about zooming in and exploring really specific structural moments, atmosphere and micro-junctures in club music but doing it in a way that doesn’t really consider genre rules or whatever. It was never really intended to be a conventional club project.
YOGIC: Noise, industrial and metal music are clear influences in your music and you have discussed them at length. These forms have forced the restructuring of social and musical formats – something shared with techno and other forms of rhythmic electronic music. How do you piece together your personal history in the respect of being involved with these seemingly disparate musical cultures?
EGYPTRIXX: I’ve been a listener and involved with lots of non-club music communities – some of those ideas and influences end up in my material, so do a lot of non-musical ideas and attitudes. This doesn’t even really feel strange or unique in 2016 haha, the music and art worlds that I’m around to seem pretty universally agnostic, which is exciting.
YOGIC: I would like to ask about your opinion on modern club spaces and what you see as their potential outside of the normative, escapist nightlife culture that permeates the environment. Could music and dance become even more vital — a means of resisting and subverting the status quo — and be a tool for social change, rather than simply an escape from the workplace?
EGYPTRIXX: I don’t think those two things (fun times and smart ideas) are mutually exclusive but yes, I personally believe that club spaces can be transformational and – if curated and maintained properly – can incubate and produce really important ideas. Ideas that can be important outside of their music niche and provide moments of unimpeachable truth. Actually I probably wouldn’t be doing music if I felt otherwise.
YOGIC: You’re noted in several interviews as being a practitioner of meditation, specifically transcendental meditation. I’m curious how you see meditation relating to your practice as a DJ. Is the club a meditative space? I’m thinking specifically of the repetitive aspects of dance music that — when honed in on — might lead to a similar state of heightened focus that one could achieve by repeating a mantra.
EGYPTRIXX: Good question! Yes I believe that music is a meditative activity for myself and many other people – there is a lot of overlap between mantric or mindfulness practise and playing/writing/listening to music. Definitely.
YOGIC: Your music seems to deal with inner landscapes, those alien places in our minds that shape and reform our perceptions and therefore our energetic motions, what has your process been in terms of channeling those inner visions into outward sonic energy?
EGYPTRIXX: I think generally speaking, I try to express non-musical ideas in music and to do it in a way that is simultaneously super personal and focalized, but also accessible and inviting. A lot of the seed ideas come from different kinda applications of imagination, whether that’s something visual or sonic or vague or textural.
See Egyptrixx with Bok Bok and resident Fens on Saturday, July 9 at Good Life in Boston, MA.
RSVP here and buy presale tickets here!
ABOUT YOGIC is a project distributed across the net. With no true actualization in physical space, it occasionally projects itself into a locality that is called Netlan. Find YOGIC wherever there is fruitful energy – across the NorthEastern American Sprawl – and beyond.
ABOUT GROOVY GROOVY – If you’re not sweating you’re doing it wrong. Conceived in New Brunswick, NJ, GROOVY GROOVY started out by throwing monthly basement raves. However, they have quickly gained notoriety, throwing a successful party with members of NON records in one of Brooklyn’s best underground venues. GROOVY GROOVY’s next party will be premiere the worldwide debut of LIMIT, the new collaborative project of L-Vis 1990 and Egyptrixx. It goes down July 8th, at Trans Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens. Sound by the always crisp Tsunami Bass Soundsystem. Support from KUNQ’s Stud1nt, as well as DJs Teleself, Akanbi, and Yogic.